


From Hell

by calicokat



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 04:56:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4006618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calicokat/pseuds/calicokat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the depths of Eichen House, Lydia is brought to encounter Peter Hale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From Hell

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Helholden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helholden/gifts).



A bed, dressed sparingly. A sink. A toilet. Three bare walls and one to strip all privacy. A cell. An antiseptic-scented prison. 

Whatever the supernatural residents of Eichen House have been interred for, Lydia knows it isn’t rehabilitation.

The door of the cell seals shut behind her. The orderlies leave, their footsteps loud in the bare hallway, the door to the locked ward slamming with steel finality.

The hair of Lydia's arms stands on end, her breathing fast and shallow. She could die here; now. Her life hangs on the whim of the monster in front of her.

He lifts his head as the slamming door's last echoes fade; raises his eyes. Lydia holds her breath as his glassy, distant gaze begins to resolve. Heart pounding in her ears, she forbids herself to look away. Predators lunge at moments of inattention.

Lydia has seen horrors in her young life. Rent bodies, terrific beasts, broken lives. She's known terror, but never terror greater than the nightmare that followed that spotlit moment on the lacrosse field as the beast in front of her now first appeared to her, when she stood blinded not only by the light's intensity but her feeble and faltering faith in Jackson Whittemore.

Peter Hale robbed her of her innocence and her mind in a single act of casual brutality. 

He sits before her.

"Lydia" breaks the silence, two choked syllables, Peter's widening eyes boyishly young in a face bearing the first lines of age.

He reaches out, reaches up, outstretched hand leading him forward as he begins to rise, begins to shake, tears welling up in his eyes. He drops his arm. His face falls. Tears overflow, leaving wet tracks down his cheeks; through his unkempt beard.

Lydia's fear runs wild, no longer of Peter, the reality of their captivity ascendant, her horror the horror that the cruel creature Peter was could be, has been stripped to a vulnerable boy – how?

He staggers one step backwards; drops, but misses the bed. It slams against the wall as it scrapes up his back. The tears keep coming. Peter searches Lydia's face, his own cringed in emotion. Her name again, a ragged prayer – _Lydia._

The fear in Lydia erupts into unwelcome pity. _This isn't about me,_ she thinks. It's Peter they want. Peter they want to break. Peter they've finally broken.

On her knees, now, she reaches out to him, ignoring his feeble attempt to push her away. She hears _Peter_ on her lips and _What did they do to you?_

His face in her hands she uselessly shushes him. His tears wet her palms, his body wrenched with each sob. She thinks of Stiles. She thinks of Peter's lips on hers, a dream. 

She doesn't take action, can't offer him that. Heart in her throat, she says things like _I'm here_ and _It's alright_ while knowing Their power to cage her is what has shaken Peter, that nothing is alright at all.

 **Peter** she whispers, speaking in a voice only she can hear. He's no banshee. He can speak to her in her own tongue, speak to her mind, but his unresponsiveness proves he can't hear with her clarity.

"Peter, please," she says, young and shaken, helpless at the enormity of his pain.

He gasps like a dying man, like he's drowning. _Hyperventilating_ her mind supplies. She can't bring herself to kiss him, still not that, but she wonders for an instant why she's so sure it would work.

She remembers his voice in her mind, remembers his scream, his emotion. She pulls him forward into her arms; clutches him to her. He buries his face in her shoulder, heaving sobs, hiccupping for air. Her hands seem so small against his back. Her own eyes sting with tears. She no longer feels pity, violently compassionate.

"Don't let them win," she whispers, voice mortal, words command.

Peter quiets; goes still; drags a breath in through his nose. It's minutes before he can speak, minutes of hiccups and blinking away tears. She feels his eyelids flutter against her neck. She continues to hold him, as much for her own comfort as his. He's big, solid, and he's warm. She's been agonizingly alone.

 **Why are you here?** – inaudible words spoken only to Lydia.

Hope fills her chest, battles to the fore. They'll get nothing from him unless she betrays him. Against a common enemy, she never will.

"It doesn't matter," she says. It does, of course, but it can't – not when They want to know what happened. They're trying to get into her head, warp her thoughts, convince her she's insane, and take her story. If they think she'll give it here, to Peter, she has to prove them wrong.

Peter recognizes and understands. She reads it in the language of his body, in the tightening and then relaxation of his shoulders. She shivers. The rapport between them, the immeasurable gravity of metempsychosis, of Peter's spirit once entwined so long with her own, is something she's never wanted. Never before appreciated.

"What have they done to you?" she asks, unexpected quaver in her voice, the enormity of the bond she feels toward and with Peter so disquieting.

 **Anything they wanted. Everything,** Peter says. A shiver of his own. Lydia feels it through her body, still holding him near. He pulls away, not so far they're no longer in contact. He meets her eyes, his swollen and red, but control returns to his voice: **I'm a mystery, you see.**

Lydia shakes her head, uncomprehending.

**I killed Jennifer Blake, Lydia. I stole her strength. They want to know the source of my power – to tear it from me. They've tried.**

Lydia accepts the revelation, feeling nothing. _That_ sours her stomach. So much death. So many bodies. She's inured, like him, and she hates the fact. _He_ did this to her, made her this way. She hates him, but only for a moment.

 **We have to get you out of here,** Peter insists with sudden fervor, a hand gripping her arm. She startles, then relaxes. She draws a deep breath, once again reeling with hope. It's crushed as quickly as it surges. Peter's wild eyes hold no master plan.

Her fate remains in her own hands. _Their_ fate.

"Both of us," she swears.

It seems impossible, insurmountable. Escaping on her own, the sheer difficulty the task presents, is already taxing her intellect.

She has to try. The thought of him bound, injected, vivisected, is too much when for all she knows Scott and his pack are dead. Peter Hale is all she has, the only tie to the reality of her history. They'll call it a shared delusion – worse, they may tell her she was never here with him. She breathes his scent in deep, wills it to linger on he skin, her clothes.

The turn of a heavy bolt. The corridor door unlocks. They've realized they'll get nothing from Peter and nothing from her – not like this.

 ** _Lydia,_** Peter says, riveting her attention to him. **Call, and I'll hear you. I'll hear you anywhere.**

Through walls. Through drugs. Through madness. Anywhere, and he has Jennifer's strength and they don't know. She only has to rally it.

She presses her lips to his, wills all her hope to him. She knows that a glimmer, a sliver of the boy she knew in her dreams exists in Peter. 

She loved him, however briefly and however terribly.

She can't promise him love, not now, but she can promise him freedom.

They wrench her away from him, hook their arms under hers and haul her back, drag her from the cell. She struggles them for show, her gaze matched to Peter's, his full of wonder, suddenly full of life.

He loves her. He'll fight for her. It's all she has, it's everything, and, for today, it's enough.

The taste and warmth of his kiss lingers on her lips as the orderlies lead her away, real.


End file.
